I don’t turn on the light. I wish I’d brought some paper or something—I don’t want to scrounge around the Mage’s desk. It’s not the sort of desk that has Post-it notes and a WHILE YOU WERE OUT pad.

I pick up a heavy fountain pen. There’re a few sheets of paper on his desk, lists of dates, and I turn one over and write:

Sir, I’d like to talk to you when you have a moment. About everything. About my roommate.

And then I add:

(T. Basilton Grimm-Pitch.)

And then I wish I hadn’t, because of course the Mage knows who my roommate is, and now it sort of looks like I’ve signed it. So then I do sign it:

Simon

“Simon,” someone says, and I startle, dropping the pen.

Miss Possibelf is standing in the doorway, but doesn’t step inside the office.

Miss Possibelf is our Magic Words teacher, and the dean of students. She’s my favourite teacher. She’s not exactly friendly, but I think she genuinely cares, and she seems more human sometimes than the Mage. (Even though she’s not exactly human, I don’t think.…) She’s much more likely to notice if you’re feeling sick or miserable, or if your thumb is hanging on by a thread.

“Miss Possibelf,” I say. “The Mage isn’t in.”

“I see that—do you have business here?”

“I thought he might be here. There were a few things I was going to talk to him about.”

“He was here this morning, but he’s left again.” Miss Possibelf is tall and broad, with a thick silver plait hanging down her back. She’s impossibly graceful, and impossibly eloquent, and if she’s talking to you directly, her voice kind of tickles your ears. “You could talk to me,” she says.

She still doesn’t come in—she must not have permission to cross the wards.

“Well,” I say. “It’s partly about Baz. Basil. He hasn’t come back to school.”

“I’ve noticed,” she says.

“Do you know if he’s coming back?”

She looks down at her wand, a walking stick, and moves the handle in a circle. “I’m not sure.”

“Have you talked to his parents?” I ask.

She looks up at me. “That’s confidential.”

I nod and kick the side of the Mage’s desk—then realize what I’m doing and take a step away from it, tangling my fingers into the front of my hair.

Miss Possibelf clears her throat prettily; even across the room, it sends a buzz up the back of my neck.

“I can tell you,” she says, “that it’s school policy to contact a student’s parents when a child doesn’t return for the term.…”

“So you have talked to the Pitches?”

She narrows her dark brown eyes. “What do you hope to learn, Simon?”

I drop my hand in frustration. “The truth. Is he gone? Is he sick? Has the war started?”

“The truth…”

I keep waiting for her to blink. Even magicians blink.

“The truth,” she says, “is that I don’t have answers to any of those questions. His parents have been contacted. They were aware that he wasn’t in school, but they didn’t elaborate. Mr. Pitch is of legal age—like you, technically an adult. If he doesn’t attend this school, I’m not responsible for his welfare.”

“But you can’t just ignore it when a student doesn’t come back to school! What if he’s planning something?”

“Then that’s a concern for the Coven, not for the dean of students.”

“If Baz is off organizing an insurgency,” I press, “that’s all of our concern.”

She watches me. I push my jaw forward and stand my ground. (This is my standard move when I don’t know what else to do.) (Because if there’s one thing I’m good at…)

Miss Possibelf closes her eyes, but still not like she needs to blink—it’s more like she’s giving in. Good.

She looks back up at me. “Simon, I care about you, and I’ve always been honest with you. Listen to me—I don’t know where Basilton is. Maybe he is off planning something awful; I hope not, for his sake and yours. All I do know is that when I talked to his father, he seemed unsurprised and ill at ease; he knew that his son wasn’t here, and he didn’t seem happy. Honestly, Simon? He sounded like a man at the end of his rope.”

I puff a breath out hard through my nose and nod my head.

“That’s all I know,” she says. “I’ll tell you if I learn more, if I’m able.”

I nod again.

“Now, perhaps you should go to lunch.”

“Thank you, Miss Possibelf.”

As I move past her in the doorway, she tries to pat my arm—but I keep walking, and it’s awkward. I hear the heavy oak door close behind us.

I don’t go to lunch. I go for a walk that turns into a run that turns into me hacking away at a tree on the edge of the woods.

I can’t believe that my blade comes when I call for it.

17

SIMON

I stop looking for Baz anywhere where he’s supposed to be.…

But I don’t stop looking for him.

I take walks in the Wavering Wood at night. Penny sees the look on my face and doesn’t try to join me. Agatha’s always off doing schoolwork; she must be buckling down this year—maybe her dad’s promised her a new horse or something.

I used to love the Wood, I used to find it calming.

I realize after a few nights that I’m not just walking aimlessly; I’m covering the Wood like I’m sweeping it. Like we swept it that year that Elspeth disappeared—all of us holding hands, walking side by side, marking off parcels as we moved through them. I’m marking off parcels in my head now, casting for light and waving my blade back and forth to clear branches. I’ll mow the whole fucking forest down if I go on like this.

I don’t find anything. And I frighten the sprites. And a dryad comes out to tell me that I’m basically a one-man walking woodland apocalypse.

“What do you seek?” the nymph asks, hovering over the ground even though I’ve already told her that it gives me the creeps. She’s got hair like moss, and she’s dressed like one of those manga girls with the Victorian boots and the umbrellas.

“Baz,” I say. “My roommate.”